


Stay | 2Jae

by cringeyuwu



Category: GOT7
Genre: Comfort, Confessions, Crushes, First Kiss, Fluff, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kissing, M/M, Mark is basically a matchmaker, RIP rest of GOT7 that aren't mentioned, Sad, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Surprise Kissing, Youngjae hates ventilators, Yugyeom appears if you squint, kissing in the hospital, please don't hurt yourself intentionally or on purpose, that'd make me sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-04 07:30:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14588073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cringeyuwu/pseuds/cringeyuwu
Summary: Youngjae feels sad and wants to end it all.He doesn't get too far.





	Stay | 2Jae

**Author's Note:**

> I basically wrote the beginning to this while crying and it probably sucks and is unedited and probably like an exact copy of Goodnight whoops
> 
> (This is basically 2.5k words of sadness and serious talk and some fluff at the end)
> 
> (How did this story get so long, someone help)
> 
> (I struggled so much with a title please appreciate)

If Youngjae will say one last thing, he will say that life is unfair.

He finds himself in a rather unfair and heartbreaking (for him, at least) situation when he has tears rolling down his cheeks fervently with blood rushing down his arms, a stinging sensation underneath his skin, and his thumb shakily hovering over the call button of Jaebum's contact.

It's strange, and Youngjae knows why he hesitates. 

Jaebum has everything - loving parents, a large mansion, enough money to buy a whole yacht, even three cats (one of which, Nora, absolutely loves Youngjae despite the boy's allergy). And then there is Youngjae, stuck in a small apartment that has a broken shower and a smelly toilet and is located next to a garbage-disposal where people daily come to dump trashy bags that smell and waft through the air. Drug dealers are common around his cheap apartment, and his father happens to be one of them, addicted to drugs, drinking almost every night and beating Youngjae during the times they both are home despite the boy's vain attempts to get enough money to buy simple food that tasted disgusting.

Life is surely unfair.

But today it was worse. Worse than the daily yelling, worse than the many slaps to the face Youngjae had grown familiar with. This time it was accompanied with a half-empty bottle aimed at his head but it hit his shoulder in his father's drunk state instead. 

Now, half an hour later, after suffering through soundless pain and the endlessly long torture to wait for his father to finally fall asleep, Youngjae sits, crying, hesitating to call one of his friends to help him like they always do without knowing what actually caused the boy's emotional pain. He had long since abandoned the pills, anyway, and that was all they knew.

Youngjae will never tell them what happens when he comes home from school. He will never tell his friends how much it hurts for him to be alive and he knows for sure that he will never tell them either because he worries. Worries that they will tell the authority and the authority will come and question him and his father and get his father landed in jail and then the whole city would know how horrible his life is.

Because life is unfair to those who try hardest.

 He clicks his phone off and shakily pushes himself from the ground after he throws it on his bed, landing face-down. If he doesn't want to be in emotional pain, then why is he even alive to begin with? He could just end it all and leave behind his broken and empty house. Maye that would be better, maybe that would help his father get better.

The light in the smelly bathroom is still on. He's told Jaebum about it before, their horrible bathroom. That's how he ends up at Jaebum's place almost every day after school to wash up and do homework before leaving to go home and pick up food on the way from the previous evening's hours of work. Jaebum's home has almost become like a second home to Youngjae - some of his clothes are folded in a corner of Jaebum's closet and Mr. and Mrs. Im are always nice to him and always convince him to stay for dinner. Youngjae always says no.

Youngjae digs through the cabinet under the sink and then pulls a small white bottle from it. He doesn't exactly know if it's the painkillers he's bought for his father's daily hangover-headaches or if they are his anti-depressants but he doesn't care as he spills the pills onto his palm and downs them in one go.

Just as Youngjae begins to feel drowsy, a loud ringing echoes through the cheap apartment and Youngjae rushes to reach his room, jumping on his bed and muffling his phone in the pillow. He turns it over to see who's calling him.

Jaebum.

Of course, Jaebum is. Youngjae laughs to himself, then coughs.

He waits for a few seconds before swiping the little green circle. Maybe talking to Jaebum will help him, maybe it'll make him just smile for the very last time.

"Hello?" Jaebum's voice cracks over the receiver and Youngjae feels his breathing slow, then speed up. "Jae, are you there? My mom just came home from the garbage disposal and she said she thought she saw you through the window in one of the apartments. Jae?"

"Hey."

"Youngjae are you okay? Why are you breathing so slow?"

"Jaebummie, I'm..." Youngjae's words are mutters. He pauses for a long time and takes a deep breath.

"Hey, yeah, it's me, I was just checking in. Jae, are you okay? You're scaring me, you're breathing  _really_ slow. Jae? Jae, what's going on?"

"I'm s-sorry Jaebummie," Youngjae murmurs. "I should've... I should've told you sooner."

"What? Told me what? What are you sorry for? Jae, tell me please, I'm worried." In the background over the receiver, Youngjae hears Mrs. Im ask what's wrong. "Jae, do you want to talk to my mom?"

"Why do they taste so bitter, Jaebummie?"

"Youngjae, are you -" Jaebum cuts off. "Mom, can you call the ambulance?" Youngjae hears background noise but he can't bring himself to figure out what is said. "Jae, stay where you are, okay? Don't move, help is on the way. Do _not_ hang up the phone, you hear me?"

Youngjae doesn't move; he hardly recalls anything from that moment forward. He threw up clear liquid once, then threw up a second time, this time red liquid. The scent is disgusting and Youngjae wishes to move, but his heart is racing and his legs are too numb to move, and his eyelids begin to droop.

The last thing he remembers before he gets pushed into a deep, black, endless lake of darkness was a paramedic trying reach out to him, trying to pull him out of the lake's reaching and sharp claws. 

 

* * *

 

 

_Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Bee -_

"He'll be okay, right?"

"He will be. We pumped his stomach all right and all traces of the drug should be gone."

He briefly reaches the surface of the lake, but Youngjae dunks back into darkness before he can do anything else.

The next time Youngjae hears the obnoxious beeping sound, it mixes with the faint scent of cleaning supplies - chlorine? - and the soft sound of murmuring. It sounds rather one-sided as if the person who is talking is on the phone. It freaks Youngjae out on the inside but he can't move or speak - that might be the cause of the strange contraption around his mouth and nose, though, which is puffing fresh air every now and then. It annoys Youngjae to a great extent and he wishes he could take it off and breathe normally again,

A small huff sounds to his right and then Youngjae hears movement, clothes rubbing against one another and skin, and a hand is gently placed on his forehead, moving back and bringing his hair with it. Cool air hits his temples and Youngjae shivers. 

By now Youngjae has fully climbed from the lake, and he lays panting beside it. He only now realizes how much his head hurts and how it pains him to try and breathe without the strange machine covering his mouth and nose, and his stomach feels like it is on fire and his legs and arms are heavy, too heavy to even move.

The heaviness slowly moves and with that Youngjae's eyelids begin to open, some light peeking through his eyelashes. He can only see white, and for a moment he believes he is dead but the chlorine scent brings him back to the realization that he is not on his way to Heaven.

"Mom - _mom_ , he's waking up." 

Papers move and are followed by the sound of someone standing up and brushing off their clothes. "I'll go get the doctor, I don't exactly know what to do now, and it's better if he were with us."

Footsteps, and then a door closes and Youngjae feels the urge to throw up. Who was that person sitting beside him, soothingly running their hand of his hair, and whose mom just left the room? Another thought crosses Youngjae's mind - where is his father? Is he with him? It doesn't seem like it, Youngjae feels as if there is no other presence in the room other than himself and the person sitting beside him. From the feel of his hands and fingers, Youngjae guesses they are a boy.

The door opens again and there are heavy footsteps, and the comforting and soothing hand leaves Youngjae's head and he feels strangely cold and lonely. Someone forces a flashlight in his eyes, shining brightly and painfully sharp for Youngjae's brain, and he squints at the light.

"He should be well on his way to recovery, I had already assumed he would wake up soon," the man, probably the doctor, says. "Just take it calmly, it'll be most likely that he is confused, try and explain calmly to him what happened. But before you do that, you should check if he's breathing well. Take off the ventilator and if he's struggling to breathe properly, put him back on it. The only thing that will be different is that he won't be able to converse back."

"All right. Thank you."

"If you have any more questions or if something is happening to him, just press the button beside the bed, I'll come as soon as I can. Try not to freak him out, at this stage of his recovery it'll make things worse again."

"Got it." The woman clears her throat. "Again, thank you."

The man leaves and Youngjae's eyelids are no longer heavy, instead fully open and he is looking around at the plain white ceiling from left to right, trying to see anything other than the wan colour.

The annoyance with the machine covering half his face - the ventilator - causes Youngjae to lift his arms, which aren't as heavy anymore. He scrabbles around at plastic to try and find something to hook his fingers behind to pull the ventilator off but the boy's hands do it before he can do so, and a blurry face appears over Youngjae's eyesight, and he can just see a grin on the boy's face.

"Mom, can you give me his glasses?" Glass clinks against wood and a second later he can see more clearly. The boy's face recalls memories and names, but Youngjae's brain is still whizzing to figure out what happened and how he got himself in what he assumed to be the hospital.

"Get him to sit up, Jaebum," the woman's voice speaks again, and the boy - Jaebum - turns around briefly. "It'll be better for us to talk with him."

"Sure,"

Jaebum moves and then hands behind Youngjae's back help him to sit up, and he immediately reaches out to hold onto something, his hand catching onto a cool metal railing to his right.

"Can you breathe all right?" the woman asks. Youngjae tries to speak but nothing comes out of his mouth. "Don't say anything, dear, just shake or nod your head. Are you breathing okay?" Youngjae nods, like the woman had told him to, and then he remembers who she is. Jaebum's mom, Mrs. Im. And Jaebum is his best friend and his other best friends are probably wondering where he is.

"Calm down, okay?" Jaebum says quickly when the beeping intensifies. "You'll be all right, we'll explain everything to you in a minute."

"How about you do that, Jaebum?" Mrs. Im says. "Then I'll go and wait in line to get us some dinner from the cafeteria. What do you want?"

"Doesn't matter," Jaebum said quickly, hand on Youngjae's back and thumb rubbing comforting circles. 

Mrs. Im nods and leaves and the silence is deafening until Youngjae turns to Jaebum, mouth slightly open. "What -"

"Don't talk," Jaebum says quickly. "Mom told you not to." Jaebum studies Youngjae's face with curious eyes and Youngjae feels uncomfortable. "Do you want to know how long you were out for?"

Youngjae nods.

"Two weeks. The doctor said it was a coma." Youngjae looks up sharply in surprise, moving a bit too fast for his liking. He flinches in pain and reaches up to hold his neck, but Jaebum beats him to it, beginning to comfortingly rub the area. It immediately feels a bit better. "Why did you overdose, Youngjae?"

Youngjae shrugs - he can't talk anyway - and recalls the paramedic asking him to stay with her, to keep his eyes open. 

"Was it because of your father?" Another shrug, then a nod. "You should've told us, Youngjae. you scared me so bad when you called me that afternoon, and then I told Mom to call the ambulance and they said they found you barely awake and with a dangerously slow heartbeat and on my way to the hospital I could only reach Yugyeom and he was a crying mess when he heard what happened -" Jaebum cuts himself off to gather his thoughts. "You scared us all."

Maybe he can try and say something, make a sound at least. He opens his mouth to apologize and, even though his voice sounds raspy and thick, Jaebum smiles.

"You don't have to apologize, Jae." Jaebum leans back a bit, rocking on his chair. "It's just... please promise me you won't do that again. And if you feel like it, or like... doing this..." He taps Youngjae's arm, which is wound in a bandage, and Youngjae shivers. "Just know that you can always call me, okay?"

Youngjae nods. He won't, though. He's just a big trouble for Jaebum - it is obvious and clear - and Youngjae knows that once he is back home, he will delete all his contacts and run away and leave his father behind. But he hesitated on that thought - he'd only hurt his friends more than he already has and that hurts him, too.

Jaebum seems to sense the younger's inner conflict and pushes up from his chair, sitting down on the hospital bed beside Youngjae and throwing his arm around Youngjae's shoulders.

"Whatever it is you're thinking of," Jaebum begins, and Youngjae looks up. "Don't worry about it. Once you're dismissed from the hospital, we'll go to your house and pick up some stuff, and you can live with me, okay?" 

Youngjae begins to complain, saying that he'd be fine to live on his own because he really has practically been doing so, seeing as his father was rarely home and when he was, he'd be cooped up in his room or asleep on the couch. Just as he says that he doesn't want to bother Jaebum and his family, Youngjae is surprised to feel a flutter of lips against his cheek, and he looks at Jaebum with wide eyes.

Before he has the chance to do or say something, Jaebum leans down and catches Youngjae's surprise once more by gently kissing him on the lips. Youngjae melts into the touch, closing his eyes and leaning closer. The arm around his shoulder left and a hand cupped his cheek gently while Jaebum's other hand lay gently on his waist.

It only lasts for a few seconds and when Jaebum moves away he moves the hand from Youngjae's waist at the same time, flicking some hair from Youngjae's eyes. 

"You don't even know how long Mark'd been egging on me to do that," Jaebum grins at Youngjae's wide eyes. 

(Half an hour later, Mrs. Im walks into her son asleep with Youngjae pulled into his side, and she simply grins and closes the door. She wouldn't mind eating two sandwiches on her own.)


End file.
